Corporate America has Nothing on these Two Toddlers!

When will Spring Finally Arrive?

Living in the midwest for pretty much my entire life except for when I spent two and a half years in San Francisco/Bay area for culinary school and enjoying life for a bit after you would think I would be completely used to the weather game we play here…I’M NOT! Every year I struggle with this little season we call winter! I can truly say I can’t wait until I’m old enough to be a snow bird. It seems like the older I get the longer winter seems to last…I guess that’s why people become snow birds! DUH! This year has been a little different as our December had no to very little snow. January came and we started to get dumped on which continued in February and March has been so up and down I don’t know what to think. One week we have temperatures in the sixties and now this past week it went back down to eighteen and had more snow!

The kids are totally over it, they are ready to be able to go outside in their t-shirts and play. I am right there with them. We have tried to take advantage of any nice day we get. Skipping the gym and taking the kids on a bike ride for nap, getting the yard ready for blooming, running, learning to ride bikes, chalking, playing in the mud!

I feel like on the colder days I have went back to doing fun stuff indoors. Baking with the kids, they made play-doh, Easter card making, bowling, coloring, and then just good old playing and using their imaginations! Which thankfully they enjoy creating scenes and playing them out often!

They set up the living room with about 30 of their trucks, dolls, and stuffed animals to have a birthday party for S’s favorite doll. K was in charge of gathering the gifts which included anything random from the playroom he could get his hands on; dishes, fake food, cars, tape measures, tools! After the birthday they had a performance. Using the toilet paper holder as the mic S did the singing and then Joe had to act out being chased by a monster, I had to fall down and get hurt, K was a Prince who saved me. It was quite a riot I wish I knew this was all going to take place as I would have set up the video camera. S is quite the director! It truly was a fun family experience.

I ran my first 5k of 2015 which ended up being more of a jog as my girlfriend that I did it with is newly pregnant but she definitely held her own! My uncle who I normally do my runs with couldn’t just jog so he did his normal sprint to the finish line!! Looking forward to doing another 5K in April and we are signed up for two 10K’s in May! Excited to get back into running just wish the weather would understand I HATE to wait two miles to have un-numb hands!

My picture doesn’t do our Easter cards justice! They turned out so stinkin’ cute. I cute up strips of scrapbook paper; only because I couldn’t find my child safe scissors. Then the kids pasted the strips on to cardstock paper. Then I cut out the egg! So simple yet so cute! Love that these two especially S loves doing crafts as much as I do!

The play-doh was a fun experience! We have done different dough and foams before and K was in need of some messy play! So out came one of our plastic drop cloths, the box of cookie cutters, rolling pins, and pizza cutters. The recipe I used I did end up adding more water to but that could have been that the measuring and dumping was being done by S and K so we could have mis-calculated somewhere along the way! Towers were built, flowers, feet, and letters were cut out. Then K in his standard obsessed with water fashion thought he needed to bring a cup of that into the mix. So then it was water dough!

We purchased a Groupon to go to the Amazing Mirror Maze with my sister and her two boys! Another experience that was well two moms that are claustrophobic and clearly directionally challenged should not be with four kids seven and under in a 1800 square foot mirror maze! When we finally made it out the kids were laughing and wanted to go again…once was enough for my sister and I!

That same sister turned the BIG 40 so for the day I and S and K made her a little birthday cake for the celebration!

I love bike riding but let me tell you pulling seventy pounds behind you can be rough! But it was so nice getting out for a nice ride! Both kids fell asleep about two miles in to the ride so it was a great little nap time for them and workout for me! Just over six miles! Outside exercise is always better than indoor!

We wanted to do something with the kids that wasn’t part of our normal routine. We decided going bowling at our bowling alley was the perfect thing! We went on New Year’s Day with my entire family and they enjoyed it. Who doesn’t love pushing a ball down a ramp in the dark with neon lights everywhere?